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The document, signed by Professor Paul Cosford, director of health protection and medical director at Public Health England, reads: “We are writing to you because we recently discovered that we did not invite you to the breast screening appointment that you should have had between your 68th and 71st birthdays.

“The NHS Breast Screening Programme invites all women aged 50 to 70 for breast screening every three years. Because of a technical problem, we did not send your final invitation at the right time. We are incredibly sorry about this and any concern it may cause.

“You will be invited for a catch-up breast screen and do not need to anything now. Invitations to women who are registered with a GP practice in England will be sent week commencing 14 May and will continue over the following weeks. All women who wish to have a breast screen will receive an appointment to take place before the end of October.

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There has also been a leaflet sent alongside the letter, with information about breast screening.

This gives information to allow people to decide if they wish to be screened or not.

The letter continues to give details for those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“If you have been diagnosed with breast cancer at any time since you were 71 years old:

“We understand that finding out we did not send your invitation for screening at the right time might be upsetting. You may have questions about what this means for you.

“Our experts say that in many cases missing a single breast screen at around 70 years of age is unlikely to make a significant difference to the course of a woman’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

“However, we understand the importance of looking at your individual case to see if it has affected you.”

Later on in the letter it explains more of “what went wrong” and what has been done to “fix things”.

This section adds: “Following upgrading the NHS Breast Screening computerised invitation system, Public Health England found some technical issues with the software. These lead to variations in how local breast screening services send out their invitations. This means we didn’t send your final breast screening invitation to you.

“Public Health England has now checked through the whole system, including looking through the date back to 2009. We have carried out urgent work on the IT software. We have also introduced an extra fail safe (safety) system to make sure this problem doesn’t happen again in the future.”

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The woman from Leicester who was sent the letter, who wished only to be known as Christine, said: “I’m annoyed now I’ll have to wait before I go, then three weeks before I hear yes or no.

“I don’t know what those families [whose relatives have had cancer] are going to do about it.”

She added that she feels “fine” in herself and has no family history of breast cancer.

However, she said it was a concern because illnesses “have to start somewhere”.

This document has also been sent to the GPs of women affected, they are invited to discuss the issue with their doctor or by calling 0800 169 2692.

When they call they are asked to have to hand details including the reference number which is on the letter, date of birth, their address, the name and address of their GP, and the name and location of a breast cancer team if they are under their care.